


The Best-Laid Plans

by blushamatic



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Kissing, Minor Barry Bluejeans/Lup, Pining, Polyamory, ttazce2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 14:10:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13389456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blushamatic/pseuds/blushamatic
Summary: In good years, Lucretia kept an agenda. A delicately bullet-pointed, color-coded schedule for how she intended to spend each waking hour of her day.Falling in love with Lup was never part of the plan.





	The Best-Laid Plans

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IsolatedPhenomenon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IsolatedPhenomenon/gifts).



> Happy Candlenights, IsolatedPhenomenon! Here's the second of your two gifts: Lucretia and Lup's winding road to love.

In good years, Lucretia kept an agenda. Not in the journals; no, this was just for her, a delicately bullet-pointed, color-coded schedule for how she intended to spend each waking hour of her day. Meals, record-keeping, research, exercise. Nothing scheduled to the minute—nothing that extreme, not since time had become abstract to the point of meaninglessness on board this confounding little ship of theirs. 

The Institute had been a different story. There, she'd scheduled everything to the minute, even her rare nights out. She’d arrive at a party at 8:15 and be out the door at 9:25, so that she could be tucked into bed by 10:30 exactly and up the next morning at 6. There was just so much to do, then. No time for extraneous socializing or hobbies or romance, things she _wanted_ but didn't _need_.

And Lucretia did want all those things. She wanted to stay out till dawn and finally learn to watercolor and go on a date, but she had just been so _busy_. There was so much to do. She’d had _plans_. She’d have time for all that in the future, she reasoned—in fact, she’d planned all that too. She’d start seriously dating four to six months after the expedition (enough time for the press attention to subside), settle down with someone by 35, and take up watercolor at 50.

Lucretia looked up from her desk where the day’s agenda lay open, out the window at a pink sky and its alien, curlicue clouds. Her own faint reflection stared back. She was older than 35 now, older than 50, and still as baby-faced as that first day. When she thought she had _no time_.

But it was fine, really. She’d mastered more hobbies than she’d ever thought possible. She’d taught herself at least three styles of painting. She’d danced till dawn on more than one occasion. And as for romance, well. They’d all made their peace with that particular impossibility in their own ways.

It had hit Lup and Magnus the hardest, as far as Lucretia could tell. During those early cycles, she and Lup would sit on Lucretia’s floor and work their way through a ball of cookie dough and remember home and cry. “It's not fair,” she'd moan into Lucretia’s shoulder for the hundredth time. “I'm, like, an _amazing_ girlfriend. It's such a _waste_.”

Lup was always tying off her most vulnerable confessions with a joke, to soften the sharp edge of her grief. She and her brother had that in common. But Lucretia was her best friend and she knew when to laugh, and when to just keep on holding.

\- -

Some cycles they wore her hair long. Some cycles, like this one, they cut it. They’d borrow Magnus’s clippers and box everyone out of the starboard bathroom, paint their toenails, and give each other the sickest haircuts they could think up.

Lucretia guided the guard around Lup’s left ear, clipping away the last of the long hairs from her brand-new undercut. It was tricky; Lup had a lot of ear to avoid. She just had to get that last bit near the temple, and then—

Lup squeaked. Lucretia froze. “Are you hurt?”

Lup laughed and waved at her to keep going. “No no no, I'm fine, it's just the, uh . . . the buzzing grazed my ear and . . .”

Lucretia spied goosebumps on her forearms. Lucretia flushed, her own very human ears burning.

“Oh gods, sorry! I forgot about . . . sorry.”

“It's fine, it's fine! It doesn’t hurt or anything, it's—HEY.”

A sudden flurry of movement as Lup flung an arm in the direction of the door. Lucretia startled. “No peeking till we’re finished!” Lup shouted. The door was a few inches ajar, and through the gap Lucretia spied the flash of glasses.

“Sorry, sorry!” came Barry’s voice, already retreating down the hall with a giggle.

“What do two gals gotta do to get a half-hour’s peace around here,” Lup grumbled as she resettled on her stool, but she was grinning, and Lucretia grinned too.

\- -

Okay, so _maybe_ she had been a little preoccupied lately. Yes, okay, she was spending most of her time in the lab, poring over journals and scrolls and necromantic spell tomes she couldn't let anyone but Barry see, but that was no reason for Lucretia to be so damn frosty, and it definitely didn’t excuse _this_.

“Who did it?” Lup said evenly, chomping her way through a bowl of cereal with as much casualness as she could muster.

Lucretia stared at one corner of the kitchen, obviously trying to look bored. She ran an idle finger along her hairline—her _freshly touched-up_ hairline. A sharp fade with a thin stripe shaved into the side. “Magnus.”

“Oh, so you and Magnus are makeover buddies now?”

Lucretia’s eyes snapped to meet Lup’s. “You were busy!”

“You could’ve asked me!”

“When?! You’re locked up in that lab doing—something—with _Barry_ every hour of the day!”

Lup dropped her spoon with a huff. This was petty. They were behaving like children, not interplanar explorers tasked with saving space-time.

“I’m _working_ , Lucretia.” She winced even as the words left her mouth. She’d meant it as an explanation, a neutral statement. It hadn’t come out that way.

She glanced up at Lucretia’s face, and her heart sank. She’d expected anger, that tight-lipped expression Lucretia plastered on whenever her blood boiled. What she saw was worse. Lucretia had tears in her eyes.

With a clatter of the bench, Lucretia stood and stalked out the door. Lup flinched as she heard a bedroom door shut with a terse little click.

\- -

“You need to talk to her.”

“We’re _fine_.”

Barry glared at her over the tops of his glasses. “I mean _really talk_.”

“We apologized, we made up, it's all peachy.” Lup picked at a stubborn clump of soot under the nail of her index finger. “We're giving each other space.”

Barry, at the end of his patience, dismissed the crackle of arcane electricity he'd been brewing in his palm. “You're _pining_. The both of you.”

Lup’s ears jolted upward. “I am not!”

“No? Because you’ve sighed loud enough to scatter my post-it notes three times this afternoon.” Lup sputtered. Barry crossed to her, crouched, and took her fidgeting hands in his own. “Sweetheart, I am an expert in ‘Pining for Elven Arcanists by the Name of Lup.’” And sure, okay, Lup’s grimace had to soften a little at that. “I am banning you from the lab.”

“What?”

Barry tugged at her wrists. “You are hereby forbidden from hiding in research until you talk. To. Her.”

Lup didn't rise to her feet willingly, but she didn't fight off Barry’s tender grip either. With a few more half-hearted protestations, she shuffled out of the lab.

It wouldn't be hard to find Lucretia. She kept to that damn schedule every day, like they were still in school. Woke up at six every godsdamn morning like she had somewhere to be. Lup peered out the porthole and sure enough, there she was: standing among those strange little tidal pools, holding a one-woman Abjuration Practice in the middle of the pouring rain. A sight to behold.

And Lup was beholding. She sighed. Gazed. Sighed again. This was ridiculous. It was ridiculous and she was absolutely pining.

She yanked up her hood, threw open the door, and trudged across the gravel to put an end to all this nonsense.

\- -

Six feet above her, raindrops splattered against the arcane bubble and trickled down its sides. Inside, it was cool and dry and quiet, save for the delicate patter just beyond Lucretia’s ward. It was her best one yet; no leaks in the ward’s surface, and she could maintain its radius if she just focused a hair more—

But her focus faltered when she spied a faint red blob through the mist. The ward shrank ever so slightly. Lucretia squinted, tried to redouble her focus. The red blob grew closer, and a studded leather boot stepped through.

Lup stood very still, an odd calmness on her usually animated face. “Broke your ward.”

Lucretia rolled her eyes. “It’s supposed to keep out weather, not elves.” She expected a retort to that, but Lup stared up at the bubble’s ceiling, transfixed by the droplets gathering and racing down the sides. The grey light on her face was dappled and diffused. Stray raindrops dotted her collarbone from her trek out to the tidal pools. Those huge brown eyes were unguarded and shining and Lucretia could only stare. The ward shrank.

“Pretty fuckin’ romantic in here.” Lup was still gazing upward as she says this, so she didn't see Lucretia balk, then take a gulp of air, then shrug in a manner she meant as casual but which came off like a nervous little twitch.

She found her tongue. “I know Evocation’s the sexy school of magic, but Abjuration’s got game when it counts.”

Lup turned, met her eyes. “When it counts?” She stepped in to Lucretia. “Like right now?”

Lup was staring at her mouth, without question, an expression on her face Lucretia had seen before but never dared to name. The ward shrank. It was mere inches from the tops of their heads now.

“Better get in here,” Lucretia warned, voice small. “Don't get caught in the rain.”

Lup held her gaze, stepped in until the tip of her nose grazed Lucretia’s, hesitated. Hot breath skated across her lips. Gods, those lips. They're right there.

Her mouth met Lup’s and the ward fell and the rain fell with it, drenching them both, but neither moved except to pull the other closer, deeper, hands clutching at hips and hair. Raindrops splashed against Lucretia’s neck and trickled down her spine. She shivered against Lup’s body, against her wet clothes.

Lucretia’s head swam and she broke away, gasping. “I—”

“—have been wanting to do that—” Lup interjected, just as breathless.

“—for a long time, yeah.”

This hadn't been on the day’s agenda. It wasn’t in the ten-year plan, or any timeline she’d mapped for herself. But here was Lup, kissing the corner of her mouth and sighing against her rain-soaked cheek. And Lucretia decided everything else could wait.


End file.
